The present invention relates in general to lighting, and in particular to a new and useful lamp which utilizes LEDs in a unique combination to produce either white light or any variation in color or intensity of light desired, preferably in the form of a lamp which can be screwed into a standard 120 volt, 60 cycle light socket which is conventional in the United States and elsewhere.
LEDs have many exciting and practical characteristics that make them very attractive for new applications and for use in many types of luminaires; however, there are some technical limitations such as narrow band spectra, extremely directional light distribution, and reliability concerns. Despite their limitations, the use of LEDs is increasing rapidly, and manufacturers are working to introduce new LED products that will address some of the technical problems.
A company known as Color Kinetics Incorporated markets an LED lamp fixture under their CHROMACORE and ICOLOR trademarks.
The CHROMACORE fixture uses direct current at low voltage (24 v) rather than alternating current at normal house voltage (120 v). The CHROMACORE fixture also needs an external AC-to-DC converter and transformer and uses logic control to control the color emitted from the lamp, which requires an external data input device such as a computer.
The CHROMACORE fixture also has the colors of the LED sources mixed after the light is emitted from the lamp, which means that color-mixing effects may not be as uniform when viewed at short distance.
The present invention mixes colors inside the lamp so that the resultant color is uniform when viewed at any distance from the lamp and has other advantageous differences over the Color Kinetics product and over other known lighting devices.